Williams: 6 Richmond students have been shot and 2 have been killed since Feb. Everyday violence needs 'Never Again' urgency, too.

Ten months later, the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., ushered in a grisly new era of school violence. But as a chemistry, environmental science and anatomy teacher for Richmond Public Schools, Ram Bhagat did not feel unsafe in the aftermath because of the presence of metal detectors and police officers in the city’s high schools.

“Our kids are more concerned about gun violence in the neighborhoods, in the community, than the potential of a school shooting,” said Bhagat, who for decades has been teaching nonviolence through Drums No Guns, which he co-founded, and the Richmond Peace Education Center.

Those concerns were punctuated by deadly gunfire Sunday afternoon in downtown Richmond, the day after people in our city, Washington and beyond marched to stem gun violence through greater control of who can purchase guns.

Brandon W. Ruffin, 29, was fatally shot outside a Subway restaurant at Fourth and Broad streets. A Powhatan County man was arrested.

The homicide occurred five blocks from the Virginia State Capitol, where a day earlier about 5,000 people gathered after a march from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. The shooting underscored how much everyday gun violence needs “Never Again” urgency.

The catalyst for the marches was the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and the remarkable activism it sparked among its surviving students.

As was noted Saturday, six Richmond Public Schools students have been shot and two have been killed since Superintendent Jason Kamras took office here on Feb. 1.

None of the shootings occurred in a school building.

The steady toll of urban gun violence can be numbing when held against mass shootings. But everyday violence must remain embedded in this conversation.

We’re witnessing a remarkable, youth-driven movement, in which teenagers are speaking with a passion and wisdom too often missing among their elders in political leadership. The Florida students are sensitive enough to be aware that the bloodshed that found its way to their school has been a way of life in other communities — including some in Richmond.

They seem intent on not letting those violence-plagued communities be left out of the dialogue, and whatever might come from it.

During her speech Saturday in Washington, Stoneman Douglas junior Jaclyn Corin, a leader of Never Again MSD, said her hometown needs alliances with other communities to spread its message.

“We openly recognize that we are privileged individuals that would not have received as much attention if it weren’t for the affluence of our city,” she said. “Because of that, however, we share this stage today and forever with those who have always stared down the barrel of a gun.”

Amen to that.

Bhagat, the 2016 Richmond Peace Education Center Peacemaker of the Year, was at the Richmond march with kids he has mentored or taught at Armstrong High, through its Priorities Freshman Academy and Leadership Program, or through the Richmond Youth Peace Project, a collaboration of the Richmond Peace Education Center and Drums No Guns.

Gun violence obviously hits some communities more heavily than others, but cannot be discussed in a vacuum of race and class. Or as Bhagat said: “I don’t want us to get into the conversation of whose trauma is worse.”

On Saturday, in a Mosby Court community that has seen more than its share of trauma, Bhagat perceived a unified, multiracial effort, “a sense of solidarity on behalf of everybody, because we have a common concern about gun safety and kids being killed by guns and sort of this intractable debate about whether we should have sensible gun legislation.”

“It’s kind of ridiculous that the NRA and the gun industry were able to prevent the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) from doing research on gun violence,” he said, referencing the so-called Dickey Amendment, passed in 1996, which had the effect of banning CDC research on firearms and public health. (The funding bill approved last week by Congress includes a clarification that such CDC funding is allowed.)

Bhagat knows the trauma of gun violence firsthand, having lost his younger brother to gun violence at 21.

Shortly after the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Bhagat — a native of nearby New Haven — traveled to his home state and Sandy Hook for a healing gesture.

“I just wanted to go there and, you know, mourn and grieve. I think I took my drums” to play in honor of the children, he recalled.

A couple of weeks ago, Bhagat performed a similar ritual at the Gilpin Court apartment where three children, two adults and an unborn child were slain in 1994. The mother-to-be survived the shooting and dialed 911. Christopher Cornelius Goins was executed for the murders.

On Sept. 10, four people were slain in the neighborhood, a death toll that conjured memories of that horrible day 23 years earlier.

Aware of this history, the Richmond Peace Education Center — with funding from Virginia LISC — established the Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team in Gilpin. A goal of this violence prevention program for middle and high school students is “to empower them to transform their community,” through yoga, mindfulness, conflict resolution, drumming and restorative practices, Bhagat said.

He recalled that after one yoga session, as they walked across a field by Gilpin, the youths “just started talking about all the gunshots they hear, and how it’s hard to sleep, and how they tell their younger siblings it’s firecrackers” so they won’t worry.

“It just spontaneously came up. And I’m sure that kids who live in any housing project or any low-income, high-crime neighborhood would probably report the same thing,” he said. “Depending on where you live in the city, gunshots are a regular part of the soundscape.”

That’s not true in Parkland or Newtown, but that’s scant consolation to communities haunted by the memories of classmates and children slaughtered en masse.

We cannot make the mistake of viewing school shootings as an aberration utterly disconnected from the everyday gun violence in our communities. Relative affluence thus far has proved no match for political fealty to the NRA.

As long as sensible gun control remains out of reach, or innocent victims of urban gun violence are treated with relative indifference by the larger community, suburban schools will remain open to target practice.

The truth of the matter should be self-evident: All of us are equal when staring down the barrel of a gun.